Interesting that this deal apparently only includes CA, AZ, and NV, and it averts the federal government imposing water cuts on a total of seven states which enjoy water from the Colorado River.
The three states agreeing to this deal are down river (excluding two Mexican states that are further down river), and I suppose they are the ones most reliant on the river.
> (excluding two Mexican states that are further down river)
The Mexican states/Mexican govt don't need to, they have a treaty with the US govt. The US govt is required to send X amount of water across the border. I forget the # and am not willing to look it up right now. The US govt has been supplementing water across the border for a while now with wells. Nothing new here.
> I forget the # and am not willing to look it up right now.
I gotchu.
1944's "UTILIZATION OF WATERS OF THE COLORADO AND TIJUANA RIVERS AND OF THE RIO GRANDE" treaty between the US and Mexico established the "International Boundary and Water Commission" (IBWC). The text of the 1944 treaty is available from IBWC's website[0][1].
According to the text of the 1944 treaty (article 10 deals with the Colorado River), Mexico is entitled to at minimum 1.5 million acre-feet of water per year from the Colorado River, and in wet years is entitled to 1.7 million acre-feet of water.
Based on the submitted article, which says "3m acre-feet of water is expected to be conserved over the next three years". If that comes down to 1m acre-feet per year, that's 2/3 of the quantity of water guaranteed to Mexico.
Sure, like the US government can break any other international contract they signed. This just would not help with further trust. There is something called international law, despite there is no world government. But states are still subject to rules, or else they will isolate themself.
Yes, but treaties are themselves extraconstitutional in the framework of international diplomacy. They’re agreements between nations, and the US constitution is only binding on us. It gets expressed as law domestically but in truth, it’s closer to a contract but without a court of law to enforce them which is why they get their own word: treaties.
The real answer, and the history, lies in the root of the word treaty. It is cognate with the verb "to treat", as in how one handles affairs with another.
>> I think the word “law” is a little misleading in this case: International law is more like international diplomacy LARPing as law.
>> That said, never found a better word for it, so maybe it’s correct.
> Per the constitution treaties are binding with the force of federal law.
1) I think that's controversial, or at least not so simple. IIRC, there's a question in US law if treaties have domestic force on their own, or must be implemented by "enabling legislation."
2) In any case, the US Constitution can't make "international law" international law, at best it makes a treaty domestic US law.
Other countries don't work with the US because they trust us, they know perfectly well after Iraq and Snowden and Trump that we're not to be trusted. They work with the US because we're the world's last superpower, have overwhelming military force and enough nukes to crack the world open several times over. We're Darth Vader, the world is Cloud City, and the deal is whatever we say it is, and if we alter it, pray we don't alter it further.
Mexico worked with the US on NAFTA because they trust US to buy cars and pay them. Not because they they think we will nuke them or blow them up with a death star.
Russia still has lots of nukes, too. Probably even more than you. They still discovered the international backslash, after blatantly breaking international law by invading ukraine.
What have they discovered? As far as I know, Russia is still invading Ukraine, they haven't surrendered or retreated. They've discovered that having nukes means you can get away with whatever you like, and suffer little more than a slap on the wrist from the international community. Which is what the US also knows. And North Korea. And China, whenever it decides to roll over Taiwan. Nuclear weapons mean the rules don't apply to you.
" and suffer little more than a slap on the wrist from the international community."
Russia is a international pariah now, with no more friends and the only states doing buisness with them are doing so, because russia is weak and without choice, so you can have favorable terms with them. Even china openly condemned russias aggression. They still do buisness with russia of course, but to very good conditions.
And china just did a important states meeting for central asian states:
Basically all former soviet states and russia was not invited or mentioned at all. China takes what russia cannot hold anymore - and russia still has to smile and dares no criticism, because without china - they would be done economically. China could not have done this prior the invasion.
And if china would try to invade Taiwan - then the military outcome is far from settled and china tries hard to avoid the political costs of a invasion. They rather want to strongarm taiwan into a forced "voluntarily" unification. Otherwise they would have invaded long ago.
Well, sure the US could decide to nullify the treaty. This would almost certainly be abysmal for Mexico/US relations. Suddenly when the US want's Mexico's help to do something, Mexico will be much less willing. Not to mention the people living along the border that need that water to survive. What will they do when they start to get really, really thirsty? I'm betting it won't be sitting on their hands waiting patiently for the US to turn the water on again.
If tensions get really bad, sure the US armed forces could probably take Mexico in a fight, but then what? What good would that do the US?
It would be a pretty idiotic thing to do, but sure, it's possible.
US Law has firmly established that the US is beholden to International Laws it is treaty to. If the Us were to stop sending water to Mexico, it would be breaking US Law as well as International Law.
US law can change whenever the US wants it to. It's like saying you hold yourself accountable not to cheat at your diet. You can just change your diet and then you're not cheating it anymore.
That’s true, but the GGP seemed to be arguing that the fact that treaties are defacto US law is sufficiently important to preventing the US from breaking an international treaty.
I agree with you and others that the driver for abiding by treaties is not US law but us reputation. But that’s the GP’s point: the law is not the main driver here.
Sure, but I don't need layers of bureaucracy and multiple branches of government to ok the change in my diet. Let alone an international community who will hate me for it.
> I wonder why Colorado and Utah were not involved in the deal? If one of them had a problem with it, would they have standing to sue?
The Colorado River Compact effectively divides states into two buckets, the Upper Basin and Lower Basin states. The Upper Basin states already came to an agreement a while ago; the Lower Basin states only came to an agreement today.
The upper basin states have already hit their targets (and then some) in terms of water usage. The problem is that California has been consuming the surplus, and there is no longer enough water flow to sustain the surplus.
I'm sure all seven states in the compact were involved in this deal. They're all signatories on the compact. The way the compact is structured, the upper basin states (Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico, and Arizona (a smidgen)) are supposed to deliver 7.5 million acre feet per year to the lower basin states (California, Nevada and Arizona (bulk)), but they can use whatever they want other than that amount; this amount was supposed to be about even between upper and lower, but it isn't. It sounds like this deal is reducing the required delivery by 1 million acre feet per year, although I don't know if that's from the original target or the lowered targets from the 2007 interim agreement, so somewhere between 6 and 6.5 million acre feet; and the upper basin states get the rest.
The laws you want to learn about are called "water rights". Western water rights laws (which are the predominate legal framework in the US West) basically say "first in time, first in right". The people who used that water first have the ownership rights of that water flow.
So it would be illegal in Colorado to build such a dam because you would be blocking the water that belongs to someone else.
In Colorado, it is illegal to collect the rainwater that lands on your roof because that water would normally flow into a river and that river water belongs to someone else. I used to live in Colorado and about 10-15 years ago, there was a change in the state law that the media proclaimed made it legal for you to collect the rainfall that landed on your roof. They left out the conditions that the statute required: you had to have an existing well permit, you could only use the rainwater for the same purposes that your well permit allowed (so if the permit only allowed watering livestock, you could not use the water for your garden), then there was another stickler - there could not be a water utility adjacent to your property (even if you were not connected to that water company). There were 3 other requirements, but those 3 were so narrowly focused that the law basically upheld the illegality of collecting rainfall.
Interesting. But I don't understand why "first in time" applies to states downstream of the source. The water started as ice melt in Colorado's mountains. So why isn't Colorado "first in time?" Is it because in the case of Colorado building a dam, they'd be utilizing the water (instead of just letting it flow), but Arizona was utilizing it before them (by pumping from it to drink)? And if that's the case, then surely Colorado can apply the same logic so long as they have some water facilities powered by the upstream flow? Also, Colorado was settled as a state before Arizona (IIRC), so they must have been using the water before anyone in Arizona was.
These states follow prior appropriation doctrine for water rights, which states that upstream owners can use/divert water for "beneficial use". Building a dam to intentionally stop the flow to downstream consumers is not a beneficial use.
This is incorrect. The water usage is split 50/50 between the upper basin and lower basin, where rights are senior to each pool. The upper basin states are also well below their allocation right now, as opposed to the southern states.
I've been following this very closely for a while - the primary issue here is still agricultural businesses in California consuming more then their water rights permit.
The treaty water rights separate upper basin states and lower basin river states, with the capacity split. In theory, Colorado has almost as much water rights as California does, but the uper basic states have been actively managing and reducing their footprint on the river (unlike California, which has mostly been in violation of it's usage).
The three states agreeing to this deal are down river (excluding two Mexican states that are further down river), and I suppose they are the ones most reliant on the river.